Protocol Snow

I spent last week in Tainan and Kaohsiung, both major cities in Taiwan, and I’ve been in Hong Kong since yesterday. I will be leaving for Taiwan tomorrow and going to Japan a couple days after that! As expected, I don’t have much time to spend online so I’ll be posting a lot more pictures by the end of July when my vacation ends. Here’s a quickie I snapped today while at The Peak overlooking the Hong Kong Harbor (I think it’s called Victoria Harbour).

I’ll be in Hong Kong for only a total of three days and this is my first time here, but I gotta say, I prefer Taiwan infinitely more. If nothing else, Taiwanese people in general are exceedingly gracious and helpful. Hong Kong folks… well, I get the impression their lives are so hectic they can’t bother with anybody else.

One thing I’ve noticed is that there’s flocks of fashionable Hong Kong girls roaming the streets and shopping at the many malls in the middle of the weekday. I was wondering why they didn’t have school or work and could afford to spend prime hours of the day shopping, but I figured they might also be on vacation like me.

The more pressing question I have, though, is how these girls manage to look so fresh at all times. They look gorgeous in their immaculate make-up and don’t even break a sweat in this humidity, nor do they even seem bothered. Short of popping into a bathroom every five minutes, I don’t understand how they can achieve this state. It would be a nice survival tip to learn as I am still pretty miserable from this weather. Not that I want to be called gorgeous, you see (I am a guy after all). But to be immune to humidity is a pretty handy status effect to have.

Visiting Asia during the summer is typically always a bad idea because the weather is so insufferable. Unfortunately, summers are the only times I’ve been able to make the trip overseas. The heat and humidity here makes it feel almost literally like I’m walking into a giant sauna every time I step outside. But it’s a giant sauna with none of the therapeutic properties and all of the discomfort. Still, as this is likely to be the last summer I can enjoy without having any responsibilities or worries whatsoever, I’m determined to make the most of my trip while I’m here.

I leave for Taipei, Taiwan in a couple days so I’m busy packing and applying the finishing touches on the points of interest I’ve planned out. My flight to Taipei two years ago was supremely awesome so I’m really looking forward to the flight itself, believe it or not. I fly using Eva Air, and last time I had the best instant beef noodle I’ve ever tasted and was serviced by some hottie flight attendants. YMMV on that last bit, since the planes are gigantic and probably house over three dozen flight attendants each. But I’m hoping the instant beef noodle is still being served.

This is a great time to introduce a guilty pleasure of mine: Airline Meals.net! If you’ve ever been dying to know what those guys up in first class are being served, this is the place. They have tons of photos for pretty much any airline you can think of.

UPDATE: While I’m on the subject of food, CheapyD from Cheap Ass Gamer posted a video of himself trying out the new Pepsi Ice Cucumber drink in Tokyo. He’s entertaining as always, check it out.

I just remembered, there is one great thing about Boston: tax free shopping! I believe the no-tax policy applies only to clothing, which is unfortunate for an electronics maniac like I am. However, I did pick up about half a dozen of those Nike Golf Dri-Fit shirts at an outlet. I love these shirts since the fabric wicks away sweat and are so much better in hot weather compared to cotton or other materials. This will be very, very useful when I leave for hot and humid Taiwan and Japan in a couple weeks…

I just got back from several days in Boston. It was my first time in the city and it’s not a bad place to visit, though I don’t think I would like living there very much, whether for work or for college. Boston’s kind of a sprawling mess with schools all over the place. I’m sure the college atmosphere is much more alive there (something that was quite lacking at my school), but now that I’ve visited Boston, I can appreciate the quiet, self-enclosed entity that is Johns Hopkins.

So yeah, I visited Harvard and MIT while I was there. My brother’s dorm room at Harvard is quite small and pitifully run down. I understand officials wanting to preserve the history and legacy of the buildings by not upgrading, but yeck, now I feel quite spoiled with the rooms I had. Call me unappreciative of art and history, and you would be quite correct.

Harvard Medical School

I’m not 100% sure of this statistic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Harvard was the #1 most toured school in the country. There’s always groups of giant tour buses parked around the school with all the tourists curious to check out the students to see if they’re any “different”. Surely it must be distracting to go to school there and feel like you’re the exhibit!

The famous MIT “Great Dome”

MIT felt empty in comparison. Not much fun looking at nerds and geeks right? I kid, I kid.

If my life were a Xbox 360 game, an achievement would have just unlocked because I am now finished with college! All that’s left for me is the graduation ceremony itself. In the meantime, I’m busy packing up my things and getting ready to move out.

My itinerary for the next couple months: after my graduation ceremony, I’m headed up to Cambridge, MA to visit Harvard University and to help my brother move out of his dorm. Following that, I’m headed to Taiwan for a month. While I’m in Asia, I’ll be going on a tour of Hokkaido, Japan, which should be pretty neat, but my personal highlight of the whole trip is a self-guided, 4 day stop in Tokyo. I’m currently busy planning out what places I want to see and shops I want to visit. From what I hear, Tokyo should be pretty English friendly but somehow I don’t believe that and have a feeling there’ll be many times when I’m going to be completely lost with no English speakers around. It’ll be interesting to see how much I’ve actually learned after 2.5 years of Japanese classes…

I was planning on typing up a review of the iRiver Clix 2, but the one at Pocketables.net is so good I’m not even going to bother. It’s a fantastic review for a phenomenal product with tons of photos, so go read it.